Marketing, Installation and Repairs to constitute 250,000 Solar Jobs

These were the words of Mr. Suleiman Babamanu, Technical Project Lead of the Federal Government’s Solar Power Naija project which is themed- Enabling 5 million Solar Connections. While appearing on the weekly program of Radio Nigeria; Have Your Say, he stated that the main aim of the government was to find the best solution to bridge the electricity shortage gaps especially in various rural communities and the government has sought to do this via three immediate quick steps. 

“The first is by building mini-grids within various communities and the second is Individual Home Systems that basically are plug and play systems. The final one is a power generation system where the company generates power but employs already existing frameworks of the resident DisCo to distribute this power to the community it is serving.”

Babamanu added that “We are employing a private sector led approach and by this we are creating a conducive environment by making policies as well as availing access to low interest loans in order to ensure that we are able to tackle this shortage of electricity across the nation.” 

“The immediate target is 5million homes which in turn are expected to consist of 5 individuals per family and as such we are expecting that a total of 25 million Nigerians would be impacted by this scheme which is a part of the Economic Sustainability Plan. The plan which was spear headed by Prof. Yemi Osinbajo whose office is also coincidentally overseeing the implementation alongside the relevant ministries,” he stated.

Reassuringly, he noted that, “The private companies selected, we ensured that they all met the requirements demanded of them; Tax payments, real working experience, financial capacity as the loans would only cover 70% of the project. It is expected that these firms upon receiving these monies would immediately mobilize to install and afterwards provide warranty, after sale services, as well as have agents on ground that can repair and replace faulty parts.”

“To fast track all these, we are working with companies that have already showed capacity to do a good job as well as pay back the loan while providing optimum service to their clients. Bearing in mind that they would be paying back their repayment of the loan from the proceeds of the services they render gives us the assurance that since the return on investment on solar power is not immediate, we can expect very good materials would be employed to forestall frequent break downs,” he concluded.